


Broken Hearts

by Kira_Dattei



Series: The Old Guard Whumptober 2020 [20]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Grief/Mourning, Immortal Found Family, M/M, Mortality, Post-Canon, Whumptober 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-18
Updated: 2020-11-18
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:33:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27622766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kira_Dattei/pseuds/Kira_Dattei
Summary: Andy’s there now but the days where she won’t be anymore is no longer so vague. Now, if they’re lucky, they’ve got decades left with her. That’s it.Prompt: Mourning Loved One
Relationships: Andy | Andromache of Scythia & Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani, Andy | Andromache of Scythia & Nile Freeman & Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani & Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Series: The Old Guard Whumptober 2020 [20]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1994617
Comments: 6
Kudos: 44





	Broken Hearts

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not a whump writer so I can't promise a huge amount of whump in all of these. I just picked the prompt from each day that actually sparked an idea and ran with it.  
> I'm mostly using these as a way to get a feel for the characters and I simply love the relationships given in canon and wanted to explore them.  
> Joe is the lucky whumpee for most of these because I just love him.
> 
> These are all going to be one-shots and they are as connected as you want them to be so you’re good to just read one and not worry about missing anything.
> 
> The feedback I got on yesterday's work was fantastic. It's kind of funny that two that are very prominently focused on Joe and Andy end up right next to each other. Hope you all enjoy

The fact that Andy was dying really hit Joe about four months after she’d lost her immortality.

He’d been watching as she, Nile, and Nicky had been training, sketchpad in hand as he once again captured the image of her ferocity when he’d suddenly gotten choked up and had to turn away to keep from just crying then and there.

Joe was a very outwardly emotional person, more so than the others. And it wasn’t like he was any more capable of feeling than they were, of course, as they all felt very deeply about plenty. He’d just always been like that and then he’d learned how to use it to his advantage over his many years. And when you’ve been around for as long as they all have, one became quite adept at self-reflection and understanding why they felt what they did.

Which was why he’d been taken so much by surprise by the sudden swell of emotion. It had been so strong and so sudden and it wasn’t something that he should have missed building up in him to that intensity.

He’d taken a few deep breaths and regained control over his expression before turning back toward his love and sisters.

Nicky was casting him short glances, enough to show that he had caught sight of something to indicate to him that Joe wasn’t completely well and once Andy noted that he was looking her way again, she shot him a questioning look. He gave a grin and a shrug to them, letting them know it wasn’t a big deal and they didn’t have to stop on his account.

Joe couldn’t finish his sketch, though. He’d lost the image he’d been holding onto. He closed his sketchbook and got up to take it inside, setting it on the table as he passed by and headed for the kitchen to make something. It would be an early dinner but he figured no one would complain, especially since they’d spent the better part of the day outside training. Not that Nile or Andy ever complained about either of the guys feeding them.

And he could figure out what had bothered him so much.

Andy was the first to come back inside, making her way across the living room and toward him just as Joe was getting dinner into the oven so she’d obviously been keeping an eye on what he’d been making and when to come in so he didn’t mess up their meal.

Andy was nothing if not a fan of good food.

She also knew that Joe would’ve gotten upset that what he’d made hadn’t come out well. He and Nicky both took pride in their cooking and how much it was enjoyed by their family.

Once she came inside, she headed straight for the table and took a seat casually at the table.

Joe couldn’t help but laugh. “You don’t do ‘casual’, boss. Why are you trying?”

Andy gave him a smirk. “Because Nicky gave me that look like I’m supposed to not ask what’s going on.”

“He can be so territorial,” Joe teased, knowing that Andy would call Nicky such before the day was out and Nicky didn’t appreciate the term, didn’t like the implication he associated with the term that meant he held any authority and ownership over Joe and so they weren’t equals.

“Yeah, well he can learn to share,” Andy replied with a grin of her own.

She then reached for his sketchbook and flipped through the first half quickly, having already seen those, slowing down once she reached what she hadn’t looked at already.

“A lot of Nile,” she noted.

“I’m less practiced with her features and would hate to learn even one incorrectly.”

“Took you forever to get Booker down to your satisfaction,” she said and his heart clenched in a way that was more missing his brother than the burning anger it had been.

He needed to come to terms with Booker’s choices. He doubted he would ever be able to understand them completely but he did need to understand where he had failed his brother so he could return to them well.

“It took him much longer than the rest of you to come to appreciate my immortalizations and how much kinder they are to us.”

Andy shook her head with a sad smile. She paused at one he’d done a few days ago, one that Nile possibly wouldn’t recognize the significance of: a hand holding a flask. Joe wasn’t sure how much of Booker’s flask Nile had seen in the time between Joe and Nicky’s capture and leading Andy to capture. He didn’t know if she was aware of just how long that flask had been with Booker.

Andy looked up at him and he gave a dismissive shrug.

“Though I can’t help that his first many years with us he made for a very sad subject. It took some time before I even saw a good side of his to capture. Sporadic inspiration and whenever necessity dictates aside, I prefer to see most of one’s expressions before choosing where I want to start.”

She nodded, knowing that about him when it came to his drawing, and then seemed to move on. “The last few safe houses we were at, I was looking for ones of Quynh.”

Joe hadn’t been expecting her to bring her up and he was grateful he wasn’t handling a knife or he would have very likely slipped up.

With Nile regularly waking up from her dreams of Quynh as Booker had long ago gotten used to them enough that he didn’t wake up to them anymore, she was also on his mind often but he hadn’t been able to stomach putting her face to paper in a very long time, not in anything he kept any amount of time after finishing anyway.

“You didn’t destroy them, did you?” Andy asked in a rare moment of sounding vulnerable.

“Of course not. I wouldn’t insult her like that.” The ones that had been stored at all the safe houses were ones not only he but Quynh herself had loved deeply and that was why he'd made sure they survived, all of them hundreds of years old now.

Joe had actually felt a hope growing in him that soon enough the iron cage holding their sister and Andy’s love would be destroyed enough by the ocean that she could at last be freed. He’d happened to catch a documentary on the finding of the Titanic a few decades ago and seeing the state of the ship and the contents had sent him on a few weeks of research into just how possible it would be for Quynh to soon be free.

He hadn’t brought it up to Andy yet, even if just to ask if she had looked herself, because he felt that she hadn’t been ready to hear it, that her guilt was still too strong. And if she shut him down, he would respect that.

It was one way Nicky had an advantage over him in discussing difficult subjects with loved ones. If it was something Nicky believed needed to be said, he would continue until he said what he’d set out to say. It helped that his love was better at thinking through what he said before speaking than Joe was so it could take longer for the person to feel so uncomfortable.

“So what happened to them?” Andy pressed when it was obvious Joe wasn’t going to elaborate.

“In a place I bought in Ly Son. One of the casual properties, not a safe house.”

“Wow, you really didn’t want me stumbling across them, did you?”

As far as Joe knew, Andy hadn’t been back to Vietnam since they lost Quynh. It had been the closest to guaranteeing she didn’t see something that would just hurt her.

“I did it a while ago. Nicky said I should have just left them so you could see them at your leisure when you were ready. He gave me the cold shoulder for weeks after we dropped the last of them off.”

“I can imagine. So why’d you do that?”

“Can I not choose where to store my own sketches?” Joe replied evasively though he knew that would be all she let him get away with.

She didn’t call him on it, though, instead just going back to looking through the last few sketches, including the one he’d been working on today. When she did reach it and traced her fingers over the half-finished lines of her own face, Joe felt another clenching in his heart, another swell of emotion.

Eventually, she closed the sketchbook and stood, then walked around to stand in front of him, her strong presence soothing him in a way that was unique to Andy.

He was going to miss it so much. Another thing to miss.

“What’s going on, Yusuf?” Andy calling him by his given name was her way of making sure he didn’t try any more evasion. He had now to figure it out.

No, he just had to be honest.

“I was trying to figure it out,” he started easily enough. “It was simply one of those moments where I was taken with emotion.”

“It’s been a rough couple of months,” Andy stated absently. “Following a rough couple of years.”

“Well, we don’t get the easy life, do we, _zaeim_?” he said good-naturedly. He chose, just as they all did, to keep caring enough to keep fighting. Sure, there were times when they’d all kept fighting because they felt that’s all they were good for, but they always came back to fighting because they believed in what they did.

Joe did believe that it was always warriors who became a recipient of this immortality for a reason. What was a warrior if they weren’t fighting?

“No, not really. But you aren’t usually one to do something for no reason. You’ve got a good handle on yourself.”

“On my good days. I simply happen to have many good days.”

Andy gave half a smile. “I’ll give you that. But you can usually track your bad days. Why was watching me and Nicky working with Nile and sketching me something that made you upset?”

Joe glanced over to his sketchpad past Andy’s shoulder and considered it as well as what had kept getting the strongest reactions from him since she walked in.

“I suppose I realized I’m going to miss you,” he declared eventually.

“Oh. Well, thanks a lot, asshole,” Andy shot back but she wasn’t serious.

“I have been selfish of your presence. Assuming of you always being there. I could always fuck up because Andromache would always be there to look after me. I had about begun to think of you to be a third in the certainties of life. And it was of comfort. Not only to me personally but I believed that the world was a better place for having you in it. For even on your worst day, you are an improvement upon the Earth.”

Andy was struggling to maintain her composure, her eyes misty with unshed tears in a manner Joe hadn’t been expecting. She wrapped her arms around him in a tight hug and he returned the embrace automatically. When she pulled away, she straightened up to kiss him on the forehead and then pressed their foreheads together, her fingers scratching absently through his beard at both cheeks.

“You know, most of the time I think Nicky’s just biased when he says that no one deserves immortality like you do.”

“That’s because he is extremely biased and can’t be trusted to ever give a neutral opinion when it comes to me. Just as I can’t concerning him.”

She grabbed a few pinches of his beard and yanked, earning a grumble of affronted Arabic from him.

“But times like this are when I think his bias is more accurate than yours. What you see in each of us, what you see in anyone…” Joe shrugged a little, hoping his dismissal didn’t make her pull away. He could feel his heart and mind settling some. “Nicky’s good at seeing the best in people but you manage to just see people.”

“Not always.” He wouldn’t have missed what Booker was going through if he was so good at figuring people out.

Andy easily realized what he meant. “Can you really beat yourself up about what happened with Booker when we all missed it? None of us wanted to see what was really happening with him. And maybe this is what he’ll need in the long run, the only way he’ll be alright when he does come back.”

Joe didn’t try to figure out a response to that, content to just be comforted by his sister’s closeness.

“You can be sad that I’m going to die. I still mourn Lykon, miss him, and I’ll really have to start preparing myself to never see Quynh before I’m gone.” Joe noticed that she didn’t say the same for Booker and he gave a brief smile at that. Even when they’d decided on the hundred years, Joe had figured it didn’t really apply to Andy. She could do whatever she wanted with the time she had left and she was likely just waiting until she was sure Booker had made at least some progress in figuring his shit out. “But I fully intend to last as long as I can before I’m gone. I’ll still be around for some time. Gotta keep kicking you guys into shape even when I’m old and grey.”

“We will be making you retire,” he shot back.

“Fine, once you and Nicky can each reliably land a solid shot on me, one-on-one, not together, I’ll retire.”

“Deal.” He'd have to remember to tell Nicky he'd just made that arrangement. Because Andy knew he'd hold her to it, that even if it had all been said jokingly enough, Joe took her safety very seriously.

They stayed like that until it was time to take the food out of the oven about ten minutes later and soon after Nile and Nicky made their way inside.

Joe left the sketch unfinished, feeling that was appropriate. He knew that whenever he saw it, he would remember this conversation and he would treasure it all the more.

He started a new one that night as Nicky and Andy pulled out a deck of cards and Nile figured out how horrible Nicky was at cards. But he didn’t draw Andy as she was now. He added age lines and filled in her hair differently to give the impression of grey. To her left, he drew Lykon, a man he had never met but had gotten Quynh to describe him well enough that he’d been able to draw a close enough likeness. And to Andy’s right, he had drawn Quynh. They were standing together as they often had, just being together in this harsh existence that had been thrust upon them. Then at each of the corners, he’d drawn in himself, Nicky, Booker, and Nile, the four of them facing outward in the impression of protecting those in the center.

All together even though they hadn’t all known one another. Andy had known them all and that was what mattered.

He gave her the drawing a few days later after he’d perfected every line.

She punched him for drawing her aged but he could tell it was just her joking.

And when he noticed that she kept packing the drawing whenever they moved, he first got a tube that it could be kept safe in. Then when he realized how much she had favored it, he kept making her more.

Only the first one had included any imagined age to Andy. He decided that he would make sure he only drew her as she appeared after that, so he could track her time since they didn’t do pictures. And he would stop drawing her from memory and instead pay attention to every shift in her features, making sure they were exact every time.

He started preparing himself for her to not be there anymore and it never stopped hurting.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading and I hope you liked it. Between the Panic Attack prompt and this one, I found that I really like exploring the dynamic between Andy and Joe. Then again I love the dynamic between all of them just in different ways but what we saw between these two's interactions just gives me all the sibling feels. ^_^


End file.
